BOOK IV. The position of the Gallic tribes. num. ascribed to the impression made among the Gauls by the defeat on the Vadimonian Lake and by the destruction of the Senonians.' It seems, however, that besides the exhaustion of the Gauls and their fear, another circumstance contributed to keep them thus long quiet; and this was probably the fact that during that long period they found occupation as mercenaries in the Carthaginian armies. The ending of the war in Sicily, while it stopped the employment of Gallic adventurers, was, therefore, a cause of renewed attacks on Italy. Rome accordingly could not fail soon to meet on another battle-field those Gallic warriors whom she had so long encountered in Sicily. The greater part of Italy, north of the chain of the Apennines, at that time justly called Cisalpine Gaul, had been for a course of years in the possession of several Gallic tribes. In the modern district of Emilia were the Boians, the neighbours and allies of the conquered Senonians, and the smaller tribes of the Lingonians and Anarians; north of the Po, in the country about Milan, dwelt the great people of the Insubrians, while to the east of these on the Mincio and the Adige lay the Cenomanians; but these tribes, little inclined, seemingly, to make common cause with their countrymen, remained neutral in all the hostilities against Rome. Besides these Gallic races, there were in the north of Italy two totally different nations: in the east and about the Adriatic Sea, the Veneti, while in the west, where the Alps and the Apennines join, the Ligurians were scattered about on both sides of the Apennines almost as far as the valley of the Arno, and towards the north in Piedmont along the upper course of the Po and its tributary streams. Attack on Four years before the outbreak of the war with Carthage the colony of Arimi- (268 B.C.) the Romans founded the colony Ariminum (Rimini), on the Adriatic Sea, as the most northern bulwark of the Italy of that time. This town was exposed to the first attacks of the enemy whom it was intended Polybius, ii. 21, § 2. to control. In the year 238 (in the third year, therefore, after the conclusion of peace with Carthage), a Gallic army, which we are told had been called by the chiefs of the Boians from Transalpine Gaul, encamped before Ariminum. However, before hostilities began, a dispute arose between the Boians and their troublesome and unwelcome guests, whose rapacity, it may be presumed, made but little distinction between friends and foes. The Boian chiefs were murdered by their own people, the strangers were attacked, conquered in open war, and compelled to return to their homes. CHAP. V. 225-222 B.C. extension Thus, for this time, the danger passed away. Still, the Proposed attention of the Romans had been drawn to their northeast boundary, where new means of defence against their colony. unruly neighbours seemed necessary. The colonists of Ariminum were clearly unable by themselves to resist the Gauls. Nothing was more suited to the needs of the case than an increase of the Roman population in those parts. This could easily be effected, and was desirable also on many other accounts. The whole country of the Senonians round about Ariminum, and south in Picenum, was depopulated and laid waste since the war of extirpation of 283, and was probably left for the use of the large Roman families only as pasture land. A better opportunity could not present itself for rewarding Roman veterans for their military service, for making impoverished peasants landowners of small estates, for peopling again a country which had become desolate, for bringing together on the endangered frontier a warlike and faithful population, and by the extension of the Latin race and the Latin tongue to Romanise the land conquered by force of arms. The only thing which was opposed to so wholesome a measure was the private interest of the Roman nobles who had taken possession of and used the land in At least according to the report of Polybius, ii. 21. Other writers related serious battles with the Gauls and their allies the Ligurians (Zonaras, viii. 18; Orosius, iv. 12), in one of which 14,000 Gauls were killed and 2,000 taken by P. Valerius Falto, consul of the year 238, and brother of the prætor Q. Valerius Falto. See p. 106. Can this be an extract from the Valerian family chronicle? BOOK IV. Agrarian law of Caius question as if it were their own. They had no legal right to the land. They were only possessors on sufferance until the state should think fit to make a different arrangement. They could lay no claim even to compensation if the land should be taken from them. But this fact only added virulence to the opposition with which the Roman nobility resisted any measure for dividing the state lands in the interests of the whole community rather than their own. We have unfortunately only very imperfect accounts of the disputes which arose in Rome between the nobles and Flaminius. the popular party relating to the allotment of the land in Picenum. Even Polybius gives us no help here, and appears to have judged the measures from a narrow and aristocratic point of view. The champion of the popular party and of the public interest was the tribune C. Flaminius. In spite of all opposition on the part of the senate, he obtained the sanction of the people for his proposal (232 B.C.). The nobility, blind and obstinate in their selfishness, carried their opposition to the utmost limits, and thus forced their opponents to take their stand on the formal constitutional law, to set aside the usual practice, and to cause the agrarian law to be passed by a vote of the assembly of tribes, without a previous resolution or the subsequent approbation of the senate. It was very much to be regretted that the co-operation of the senate was set aside, and that the popular leaders were enabled to become conscious of their power. But the senate could only attribute the loss of its influence to itself. It had taken up a position which it could not maintain, and hazarded the strength of its moral weight, which, till now, had been unimpaired; although, legally, since the Hortensian law in 287 B.C., a resolution of the tribes needed no confirmation from the senate. It is therefore not without a good reason that from the acceptance of the agrarian law of Flaminius by the 1 Polybius, ii. 21. Cicero (De Senect. 4) differs from Polybius in placing the law four years later. assembly of tribes against the opposition of the senate Polybius dates a change for the worse in the Roman constitution.' CHAP. V. 225-222 B.C. Conduct of Flaminius. If the nobles were not able to prevent the useful measure of Flaminius, they knew at least how to avenge the patrithemselves. The hatred of his enemies pursued him to cians to his death on the bloody battle-field of Thrasymenus; nay, it even survived him, and endeavoured, by venomous and false representations in the Roman annals, to blacken the name of the popular leader.2 Flaminius. The agrarian law of Flaminius did not remain a dead The great letter, but was fully carried out. The country along the road of Adriatic Sea, through which formerly the barbarous Senonians had roamed, was filled with Roman settlers.3 This extreme outpost of Roman civilisation was connected with the centre of the empire by the Flaminian road (Via Flaminia), which crossed the Apennines in Umbria, and owed its name as well as its origin to the founder of the settlement in the land of the Senonians. It was the second great highway through Italy, connecting Rome with the eastern coast, its terminus being at Ariminum on the Adriatic, as that of the Appian way was Brundusium. These two roads opened the mountainous interior of the country to commerce, and united the seas on the east and on the west. ments Before these works could be completed, the neighbour- Moveing Gauls showed great uneasiness about the further among the advance of the Romans. The extension of civilisation is Gallic tribes. always an attack on surrounding barbarism; and as it was at that time in Italy, so is it now at the present day in North America. The Boians looked forward to the time when their country, like that of the Senonians, would be seized by Roman settlers; they saw that they were doomed to extermination, and they determined to ' Polybius, ii. 21. 2 Polybius, ii. 81 ff. Unfortunately we have received no information regarding the number of the settlers, and the extent of the portions of land allotted to them. Polybius, ii. 21, §§ 8, 9. BOOK Fears of the Ro mans. try and avert the threatened danger by an attack on Rome. They organised a military alliance of all the various Cisalpine Gallic tribes with the single exception of the Cenomanians, and they drew swarms of adventurers across the Alps by the prospect of rich spoils. The latter, called Gæsatians, were not a peculiar Gallic tribe,' but volunteers from all parts of the country, such as for many years had been accustomed to enter into foreign, and mostly into the Carthaginian, service. They united together to form voluntary companies under separate leaders, a custom which prevailed for centuries among the Gauls and their neighbours the Germans. The bringing together of these forces, with the manifest preparations for a war with Rome, roused again, not in Rome alone, but in the whole of Italy, that fear of the Gauls which had never quite disappeared since the battle on the Allia. The Romans had certainly overcome their rude enemies in many engagements, but not without having suffered many reverses on their own part. The brave Roman soldiers trembled at the thought of the Gauls, and shook with terror at the sight of the huge, half-naked, defiant forms. Their minds were alarmed by supernatural appearances of all kinds. A three-fold moon, or a sudden bright light in the midnight sky, flowing blood, and similar threatening signs were reported on all sides, and seemed to show that the gods were exasperated and must be solemnly appeased. Superstition is always apt to do violence to human feelings; and although the Romans had long since given up ascribing to their deities a Satanic thirst for human blood,3 fear so troubled their thoughts that, to avert the impending evil, human beings were sacrificed on the public market in Rome. A male and a the Plutarch, Marcell., 3. 2 Zonaras (viii. 20) and Plutarch (Marcell. 4) place these 'prodigia' in They were, according to Plutarch (Marcell., 3), #paws diakeíμevol pès τὰ θεῖα. The Forum Boarium, Orosius, iv. 13. Plutarch, Marcell. 3. |